Police: Port Arthur shootings could be linked

Updated 5:34 pm, Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Port Arthur police believe shootings that left one man dead and another hospitalized could be related.

A man who appeared to be in his early 40s was discovered dead from a gunshot wound Tuesday about 8:30 a.m., when a delivery driver was docking a truck at the Royal Furniture store in the 4200 block of Gulfway Drive.

Several hours earlier, around midnight, another man was taken to an area hospital after being shot in the same block that the dead body was found hours later.Police tried to interview the surviving victim, who was sent to a Houston area hospital with a non-life threatening gunshot wound to the arm.

Port Arthur Deputy Chief Raymond Clark said detectives struggled to make sense of the survivor's story because he was going into surgery when officers arrived. Investigators will try to interview him again today.

"We have stories from people that are not making sense," Clark said. "We still have other stories to get but there's nothing really concrete as to what happened. We think (the shootings) are related but we just don't know how it transpired."

Clark said investigators obtained some information from the scene but are still gathering surveillance video from area businesses.

"We're still trying to put the pieces together," Clark said. "It's like a puzzle right now."

Detectives know of at least four sets of cameras in the area that could assist with the investigation, Clark said.

The delivery driver was backing up his truck at the furniture store when he saw a pair of legs, Clark said.